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A lot of political amateurs put weight into Google's ability to predict outcomes in elections based on search trends. Personally, I've always used Google's search traffic as a trailing indicator of strength and of course as a way to capitalize on the traffic for marketing. Whether it is straight paid search, YouTube, or display ads in Google's display network a sudden increase in traffic offers opportunities to either defend your positions or increase membership/donations. So let's take a peek at the last 90 days in Google Search for a few of Republican presidential candidates plus one more.

So what do I see?

You can see the double spike for Michele and Rick Perry on August 13. Obviously that was the Iowa Straw Poll win for Michele and then Perry's announcement. Both of those were tremendous fundraising opportunities

Perry's traffic really takes a steep slide after the announcement but in the past 90 days he has the most amount of search traffic (you can see the strength by the color coded bars). I don't know what their online advertising activities are, but from what I've seen it's zero.

There were two Perry spikes around the early and mid September debates. Those were around the debate attacks he was getting around his HPV executive order and other points brought up concerning his conservative track record. Those were defensive, rapid response activities (that links to an old post on how to use search for rapid response) that were missed or fundraising opportunities for other candidates (see this clickz article).

At the end of September there are two very interesting spikes. The first one is around Herman Cain and this should represent fundraising opportunities for him but like Perry, I haven't seen any online advertising since the Iowa Straw Poll. To put the Cain spike in perspective the height looks a lot like the height for Perry's announcement, Michele's Straw Poll Victory, or Michele's announcement back in June (not shown on this chart). Cain should be getting a lot of donations now and names of people interested in joining his campaign - however, like a lot of these sudden spikes, he needs to capitalize on the short term opportunities.

The other spike is the Chris Christie spike, which until this week the search traffic was pretty vanilla. I personally don't believe my Governor is running for President in 2012 but that spike at least represents huge interest or the pressure he is under. If they had a PAC advertising around his name this would represent a great opportunity to fundraise or gather names of potential supporters.

Google search traffic is a trailing indicator of events that have occurred or are occurring in real time. It represents good marketing opportunities if you know how to capitalize it. Oh one final Chris Christie note, if his search traffic spikes to the August 13 traffic spike, you can pretty much be guaranteed that he opted to run for President.

On a YouTube Politics panel I was on, I was asked by the moderator, Google Account Executive Robert Saliterman, if I had any advice for President Obama's ad campaign. I did and it turned out to be a little controversial. I do admit that I was trying to add a little pizazz towards the end of the panel, but I really do believe my arguments are sound.

Basically, I think that the President of the United States should not be running a site called "Attack Watch" where someone can go to report an attack, track "false" reports and facts, and read all sorts of Obama propaganda. It was wrong when President Nixon had a list and it is wrong when President Obama makes a list (unless you are one of the media agencies, then it can be helpful 'Natch).

When challenged by my panelists during the panel and afterwards, I do believe that the President should not be running a site like this, especially with the data collection capabilities available in 2012. Basically if you report someone or sign up for emails, President Obama can do the following with your data - personally identifiable and non PII data linked together.

When you visit Attack Watch take a look all the way at the bottom for the Privacy Policy Link. Then take a read through it. If you don't have the time, here are the low-lights that prove my point, that the President should not have this data available to him....BTW - in case they change the policy, I copied and pasted these links on September 17, 2011 so they were LIVE when Attack Watch was launched.

WHAT INFORMATION DO WE COLLECT: Such information may include personal information, such as your name, mailing address, email address, phone number, and credit card information. Personal and demographic information may also be collected if you provide such information in connection with creating a profile or group, leaving comments, posting blog comments or other content, sending an email or message to another user, or participating in any interactive forums or features on the Sites. In addition, from time to time we may collect demographic, contact or other personal information you provide in connection with your participation in surveys, contests, games, promotions, and other activities on the Sites.

In addition, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) may require us to collect personal information from donors. For example, the FEC requires us to collect (and disclose) the name, mailing address, occupation, and employer of all individuals whose donations exceed $200 per calendar year.

Passive Collection: When you use the Sites, some information is also automatically collected, such as your Internet Protocol (IP) address, your operating system, the browser type, the address of a referring web site, and your activity on our Sites. We treat this information as personal information if we combine it with or link it to any of the identifying information mentioned above.

In some cases, third party vendors may collect personal information from you, such as your name and email address, on other web sites and provide this information to us, or OFA may collect personal information that you enter directly within an advertising unit.

We may share personal information as follows: with vendors, consultants, and other service providers or volunteers who are engaged by or working with us and who need access to such information to carry out their work for us; with candidates, organizations, groups or causes that we believe have similar political viewpoints, principles or objectives;

Basically, what does this mean? Simple. President Obama can:

collect your web surfing behaviors on and off their sites

combine it with personal information like credit card, employment, phone number

use the combined data for anything it wants

and then provide that information to anyone it wants - that information can include the information you reported on a friend or neighbor

Do you really think the President of the USA should have this information? Do you really think the President of the USA should have a site to report neighbor and then combine this information? I don't. I might not be so scared if they didn't offer up that they could combine the PII with non-PII data, but they can according to their privacy policy.

I think it is one thing for a candidate to collect this type of marketing information. However, it is not appropriate when your Government does.

So the political world was all in a tizzy because President Obama announced he was running for reelection. I know what a surprise. Of course, it launches all of the political campaigning spin including how the campaign is going to be different, built from the ground up without any big TV campaigns. Of course you know they are coming - that's where he spent the vast majority last time around.

Back in 2007/2008 he promised to be a different candidate rising above partisan politics and making all sort of campaign promises from staying within campaign finance laws, closing Gitmo, not going to war without Congressional approval, single payer health care, fixing the economy, letting the Bush tax cuts expire, and so on. However, rising above partisan politics is what attracted people not normally involved in politics with that hope and change message.

Well, what I found very curious was how their initial online ad buy was very much partisan. In fact, so blatenly partisan that I was surprised and spent 15 minutes out of my busy day looking around for his ads.

Of course I found text ads on Google (can't let his buddy Eric Schmidt down) but that's not where the real money was spent. I found giant take over ads (full page ads shown here) on Huffington Post, The Daily Kos, and Talking Points memo. Pretty much the big 3 in the liberal news/blogger world. Clearly Obama's target was his base but has it shrunk so much that they only wanted to target the liberal sites?

I looked on CNN. Nothing. NY Times, LA Times, Politico, MSNBC, Washington Post, and even slid down the liberal news/blogger list and found nothing - nothing other than on those big 3. Could the President really have put a cap on his online ad budget at launch and only went with those 3 sites?

And really, The Daily Kos? Have you actually read the comments and blog posts made there? Do you really think The Daily Kos attracts independents? Has your base and budget shrunk so much that you had to make The Daily Kos a critical component for your reelection campaign. Don't tell me you didn't need to advertise on CNN because you would have earned media - clearly those big 3 sites would be drooling over your campaign too. At least with the NY Times you'd catch non-liberals reading the business or sports pages...

I'm a little surprised about how obviously partisan this ad buy was at launch. It didn't even look to try to find people other than his base.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

P.S. I know this was very unscientfic and there may have been other buys I didn't see, maybe even hyperlocal ads

Pawlenty has repeatedly pointed to the Massachusetts plan of his potential rival for the 2012 Republican nomination as the perfect example of how not to do health care reform. The Minnesota governor has made that case in numerous interviews, speeches and op-eds that, while not focused on the Massachusetts program, make his criticism of it clear.

PardonMyFrench - Not sure I understand Pawlenty's logic for attacking Romney now - way too soon other than to get his name in places like Politico. Strange as this might sound, out of the ones I think are running, I like Newt and Romney best, I don't know a lot about Pawlenty and he certainly isn't on my 'do not like" list as a few people already are.

The conservative blogosphere unleashed a torrent of criticism against Mike Huckabee Monday after a man whose sentence he commuted as Arkansas governor was suspected of gunning down four police officers in Washington state over the weekend. via www.politico.com

PardonMyFrench - Before my comment, just a clarification point. I like Mike Huckabee. I've never worked for him or his PAC and of course made no donations to his 2008 campaign (I maxed out on McCain). I also did grow to like him more because he helped us out on the McCain campaign by always attacking Mitt Romney. If he ever became a client of ours, I'd gladly work for him/PAC. Back to the commentary on this issue....

During the 2008 primary season there were 2 negative issues that followed Huckabee – the soft on crime with the large amount of clemencies and his tax, spending record in Arkansas; as I recall, Club for Growth was pounding Huckabee on this record. I don't remember for sure, but I believe Club for Growth ran anti-Huckabee TV ads in primary states, but can't be sure.

While he clearly appeals to the value/social conservatives the hard on crime, anti-tax/anti-spending crowd will NEVER let this die especially out of the gate in the next primary season. He’ll get hounded by anyone positioning themselves to the right of him - let alone anyone trying to position themselves as an electable moderate. I'm thinking the attacks on McCain for immigration reform, but in Huckabee's case there is documented numbers to back up these talking points.

Back in 2008, Huckabee came out of nowhere in Iowa, was an after thought in NH, NV, MI, setting up the battle in South Carolina with McCain which was really Huckabee's last stand. I could literally write a research paper on all of the targeted advertising we did in South Carolina to minimize Huckabee's impact in the state (I also campaigned in the state for McCain) - display ads, click to play video ads, in-state regional media buys, paid search, etc

In between IA and SC it was McCain versus Romney, followed by McCain's win in Florida (final round versus Romney) and then onto Super Tuesday which turned into a victory lap for McCain.

Other than SC, we pretty much left him alone. Huckabee won’t be afforded this “luxury” to be viewed as an unknown next time around; the other candidates will come after him from start on these two issues.

I like him, but I think this episode makes it very difficult for him. I wouldn’t be shocked if he stays out of the race. Then again, his PAC is popular, he has his own platform on his radio show, and there are plenty of social conservatives (there is potentially Palin to worry about and I doubt she'd leave him alone).

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